Folding and/or collapsible furniture is used widely as temporary or recreational seating because it can be constructed of lightweight materials, and can be folded into a smaller volume for transportation or storage. Folding and/or collapsible furniture can include conventional folding chairs (See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,233,749, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety), collapsible chairs (See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,045,177, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety), lawn chairs (See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,026, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety), collapsible and/or folding tables, etc. Folding and/or collapsible furniture is generally at least partially unstable. Misapplied forces can result in unintended collapse of the furniture, and potentially to injury to users. For example, when a force is applied to the rear of the seat of a conventional folding chair, the chair collapses easily and can be very dangerous. Furthermore, a folding chair is easy to collapse to clamp a child when the child stands on the folding chair. Folding furniture can also pose threat during transportation and storage, as the furniture can fall out of a collapsed configuration causing injury to a user, or can pinch a user as it folds and unfolds.
Safety devices have been developed to mitigate the dangers associated with unintended collapse of folding and/or collapsible furniture (See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,997; U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,848; U.S. Pat. No. 5,707,105; U.S. Pat. No. 6,206,462; U.S. Pat. No. 6,517,151; U.S. Pat. No. 6,536,839; U.S. Pat. No. 6,595,582; U.S. Pat. No. 6,827,395; U.S. Pat. No. 7,086,694; herein incorporated by reference in their entireties). However, previous safety devices suffer from the shortcomings that they must be affirmatively engaged, can inadvertently be unlocked, and/or can be readily unlocked by a child. The field is in need of a device which overcomes these shortfalls.